


Carrion

by Angelas



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Language, M/M, Mind-Fuck, Psychological Horror, Sexual Content, Slow Build, non-con, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:57:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2560508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelas/pseuds/Angelas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a simple one-man investigation quickly turns into a living nightmare.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overtime

**Author's Note:**

> still not sure what sort of response this will get~ but might as well give it a go. 
> 
> I anticipate this to be about 3-4 (brief) chapters long. so, not too big. c:

**oOo**

Complaints have been pouring in.

And rumors swarm through town like flies.

And like flies, they must be smashed.

Every last one.

At least, that’s what Juli says through the static phone-line that night, a half hour away from Sebastian finally getting to go home.

If ‘home’ was indeed considered a one-room, one-bathroom, one-everything, shitty midtown apartment in the middle of nobody-cares-anyway.

“Are you sure this requires immediate attention,” Sebastian mumbles, raking back the stray of his hair with one hand. “Can’t it wait for, I dunno, Wednesday?”

“No. It can’t wait until Wednesday,” Juli says simply. “Its regulation, and you’ve got Joseph with you.”

“Regulation?” Sebastian scoffs, turning towards an oblivious Joseph. “What the hell is it? Some killer grandma on the loose? Multiple homicides?”

“Well, no,” she says after a moment. “More like a smell.”

“A _smell_?”

“Yes. A smell.”

“You’re forcing overtime on me because of a _smell_?”

“It’s a very bad smell, Sebastian,” Juli sighs. “Look, just go. It’s suspicious, and the whole damn county has been on my ass about it since last week. Shouldn’t take too long. Place is a relic. Likely abandoned, edge of town. Bound to have a couple of dead rotting animals, at most. Worst case scenario: a dead guy. I just need a proving report that you actually took a look around.”

“What if there’s someone there? Hell, what if somebody _lives_ there? Jesus, Kid, there’s a procedure to these sorts of things, I can’t just barge in there—”

“Unlikely,” Juli clips, ignoring him. Sebastian could hear her typing like crazy on the other end. “Look, I’ll trace your vehicle to the coordinates to make it easier for you two.” She pauses, her typing intensifying in the silence. “Oh, and. Good luck.”

Line drops. Sebastian looks again towards Joseph. He’s chuckling against the black leather of his glove.

“That fucking funny, huh?”

**oOo**

So, yeah.

Juli never mentioned that the place would be some creepy giant mansion.

No houses near it, nor outlined grove. The closest was perhaps half a mile down.

Dry alcoves of woodland stretched far into the distance, surrounding the area in mostly blackness. And if Sebastian himself were to guess, the stench might have been wafting from somewhere deep in there.

And that wasn’t his division.

No lights to be seen in or around the premise, either. Just the dim mercy of a faraway moon floating far up into the sky like some preternatural balloon…and Joseph’s penlight.

Sebastian looked around, chucking out a proper flashlight from the inner pocket of his overcoat. And a cigarette. Just in case.

“I don’t get paid enough for this shit,” he muttered. “You pick up on anything, Joseph?” He gloved his hands, looking to inspect the rusted gate before them. It flew itself open before he could even touch it, however. As if some invisible force had unlocked it clean from the opposite side. He rubbed his head. God, he needed some absinthe right about now. “Or am I going nuts?”

“Not particularly. I mean, it _seems_ abandoned. But there is no smell.”

“Exactly my opinion.”

“Should we call in?”

“No. I got this.”

Joseph whipped out his notepad. “If you say so.”

Sebastian turned to face him. And of course he was already going all out with his Tesla-worthy notes about anything and everything and how all the seven galaxies came to be. Guy looked tired as hell, though, even beneath his glasses.

Sebastian didn’t blame him. In fact, Sebastian felt like shit for it.

Joseph’d been working since six in the morning that day, after all: finishing up what Sebastian never could be capable of for the sole sake of getting him out of already-hot water with the sergeant (aka asspit).

Basically, Joseph should’ve gone home ages ago. But he just wouldn’t.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Sebastian said after a moment. “The reports, I mean. I could’ve dealt with them myself.” He paused. “Okay, maybe not _done_ them. But I could’ve taken the fall.”

“No. You couldn’t have,” Joseph added, never looking away from his notepad. “Besides, he would have fired you this time for sure.”

“Fine. Maybe he would have.” Sebastian looked away, feeling cheesier than that one time he devoured two cans of string cheese by himself. “Tell you what. Go home. I’ll cover this. I don’t need you babying me around.”

This time, Joseph looked up at him, stilling the pen in his hand.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“And Kidman?”

“I’ll deal with her.”

“And the report?”

“I’ll write it. Give it here.”

Joseph looked behind him. “And the car?”

“Take it. I’ll call a cab.”

“But—”

“That’s an order.”

Sebastian’s tone came out a little harsher than he would have liked, but Joseph nodded, anyway. Didn’t say anything further.

He took the car and left without another word.

**oOo**

As soon as Sebastian stepped through the gate, rain came pouring down.

Gently at first, in scattered drops.

But by the time he reached the front door of the place (quite broad in size), a threatening storm began to rumble from someplace inside the ever-darkening sky.

“Great,” Sebastian grumbled, carding out his badge. “Just dandy.”

He reached and knocked on the door out of mostly courtesy (no way someone actually lived in there, if not for the occasional slumbering bum), but before he could level up his efforts to some violent banging, he heard what he thought were footsteps coming from the other side.

He heard locks being clanked around. Chains and the clattering of keys. Lots of them.

Well, shit. Maybe somebody did live in there.

He stepped back, straightening up his coat and clearing out his throat. No liable warrant on him, of course, but at least he still had his million dollar smile to use as last resort.

At least, that’s what Myra used to tell him back when she was still at his side:

That his smile was what made her fall in love.

After a while, the door began to creak open by just a slant. Hardly enough to make out who it was.

Either way, Sebastian stepped forward, already getting a bad feeling in his gut about the whole thing. Kidman sounded pretty damn confident that nobody would actually live here. And once Kidman became confident about something, everyone else should be, too. No questions asked.

“Hello,” Sebastian spoke, flashing the gleam of his badge towards the crook of the door. “Detective Castellanos, Krimson City Police Department. How are you doing this evening?”

No response. Sebastian sighed.

“I hope well. Anyway, we’ve been getting several complaints about a ‘bad smell’ coming from within the premises. No official statement yet, but we’ve gotten calls. If you wouldn’t mind, sir—ma’am? I would like to have a look around.”

This time, Sebastian waited patiently for some form of reply.

“On what grounds?”

Male.

Not old.

Perhaps affluent of tongue, aware of the law, not an idiot.

Operation smile, terminated.

Sebastian stepped a little closer then, not quite catching a face, but enough to snag a chaste glimpse of the manor’s interior.

And from what he could see, it was fucking huge.

Fancy. Victorian. Lots and lots of tiffany. Likely authentic.

Sufficient information for the risk of another half-assed report, anyway. Even if the guy decided not to let him inside.

“Look, sir, I’m going to be honest with you tonight. I’m tired, hungry. My partner just took the car and left. Honestly, I just want to go home.” This never _not_ worked on everyone before. “And so far, I haven’t smelled a damn thing from a mile down. If you could kindly allow me to nose around your foyer for just a few seconds, I’d be happy to get off of your property as quickly as possible.”

At first, Sebastian thought he was gonna get the door slammed right at his face, but then the thing actually began to screech open all the way, revealing at last the man behind it, a few feet away, just barely brought to light by the flickering candle-glimmer of an age-old chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

The guy wore a hooded sort of medical? cloak (tattered at length) with a high-collared shirt beneath, covering away most of his neck. All white. Pale. Like his skin. He wore heathered slacks, tight, carelessly left undone at the hem.

Overall, he stood quite tall in retrospect; lean, sharp, unshaken in his posture. Yet, from what Sebastian managed to see of his face, at least a quarter of it lied deeply tarnished. Burn scars or birthmarks, he wasn’t sure. There simply wasn’t enough light in the room to show him.

Either way, Sebastian tried not to stare for any longer than needed.

He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him.

“Terrible weather out there, ain’t it,” Sebastian found himself saying midst his attempts to balance the clipboard against his arm so that he could begin writing shit down. “Not that it hasn’t already been that way before—”

“Are you familiar with yourself, detective?”

Sebastian spun then on his heel, but the man was no longer behind him where he once was just seconds ago. Somehow, he’d made it to the staircase, several feet away, without having made any ilk of noise; face almost entirely shadowed from underneath the darkness of his hood.

It was a little fucking unnerving, to say the least.

“Sir?” Sebastian managed, chuckling. “Excuse me?”

But the man did not repeat himself.

**oOo**

Sebastian decided that he wouldn’t waste any more time on this guy.

He would focus only on the job.

Carefully, he paced the foyer a few times, traced rows of fossil dust with one of his gloved fingers, took note of all the innumerable amount of cobwebs clinging from the low and high junctions of the ceiling and the walls, the outdated furniture, the bizarre lack of electricity (there were only tapers), ancient carcasses of long-dead flowers lingering yet in badly broken vases—

And all along, Sebastian felt eyes on him like holing acid, a freight heaviness in the back of his skull; as if he were being read from all four corners of the room, studied, examined, _probed_ , like some sort of painted picture on the wall.

Truly, Sebastian hadn’t ever felt this uncomfortable in all his life.

And when at last he felt like he’d seen enough, Sebastian looked once more behind him.

Indeed the man was still standing in the same exact place, unmoving, as if time itself had never really passed between them.

..Was this guy for real?

“I think that will be all for tonight, sir,” Sebastian said, approaching. “Thank you for your time.”

He offered his hand (not that he particularly desired to, but really, it came with the job). And oddly enough, the gesture was returned. Quite quickly, mind you.

Firm. White. _Stark_ white. Cold.

Very cold.

And even though Sebastian wanted to, _needed_ to, he would not look up towards the man’s face.

Like, he physically couldn’t.

From the arm up, he felt almost paralyzed, as if he’d somehow gotten his arm sliced off his body.

Instantly, Sebastian pulled his hand away.

This close, he nearly could have sworn that he’d gotten a strong whiff of something.

Hardly there, hardly real, but always unmistakable.

Something sour. Bitter. Fetid. Burning.

But he spoke no word of it.

Instead, Sebastian nodded his head only once before turning his back, leaving just the way he came.

Outside, there was no sign of previous rain.

**oOo**


	2. Bad Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ty all so much for your A+ feedback. truly. it means so much. ;-;
> 
> &special thanks to waifu Vivian for all her brilliant advice<3

**oOo**

Sleep didn’t come easy that night.

Usually, Sebastian came home and hit the mattress like a rock; didn’t wake till Juli rang in to yell at him.

Yet, by the first sign of morning-light, Sebastian was already on the verge of getting dressed.

And all along, he’d felt a strange heaviness being pressed down against the length of his spine that he simply wasn’t able to shake away. As if somebody were standing there, somewhere—everywhere— _staring_ at him.

And even though he would never ease himself to admit it, Sebastian had indeed spun around on several occasions to look behind him, but there was never anything there.

He pushed himself to spend less time on his hair that day. Didn’t shower or shave.

Just grabbed his keys, locked the door, and left.

**oOo**

He met up with Joseph at his office just minutes after he arrived.

Well, more like he asked Joseph in.

Through text.

And of course Joseph had every right to find it quite…odd.

He sauntered in, brow subtly raised, careful as he shut the door behind him. Then he just stood there, not saying anything.

“I’m not gonna hop over and strangle you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Sebastian told him. “That’s Kidman’s job.”

“She apologized for that,” Joseph stammered, re-adjusting his glasses. He approached the desk, sitting down (slowly) in one of the empty chairs. “But, you know, you could’ve just called—“

“Yeah, well, I didn’t,” Sebastian muttered, bringing his legs down from the desk. He paused, sat up, shifted, and stared deeply at the blank papers in front of him. Then he looked up again. Cleared his throat, leant in. “Hey uh. Do you. Do you want to go get coffee with me?”

Joseph blinked.

“Coffee?”

“Yes. Coffee.”

“Like. Now?”

“Like now.”

“But you never drink—”

“Well. Things change. I used the internet last night.”

Sebastian knew Joseph well enough to recognize the totally weirded-out look he was getting.

“Uh. I suppose if it’s quick—”

“Very quick.”

Joseph stared. “Are you feeling okay, Sebastian?”

“I’m feeling fabulous, Joseph, thank you for asking.”

And then silence.

Eventually, both men got up in quite the awkward fashion, stiffly traversing the room in a manner that kept them always at an acceptable distance.

Needless to say, their scandalous exit earned itself more than just a few embarrassing whistles despite their efforts, anyway. Including Kidman’s.

**oOo**

Outside, the road lied covered in fog, blotting away most of the sun.

People walked through the streets with their heads down low to the ground, almost as if they were expecting to be obediently struck down; beheaded, slaughtered, or worse. Like cattle. It didn't matter, either way there wasn't a single living person who walked with their backs braced up high with at least some sense of pride weighing in upon their shoulders, much less a smile.

And sure the world sucked and people died and global warming was an ever-fucking issue, but at least they weren’t stuck in the middle of the 1930s, living off of famine or scraps.

God. This town was such a downer.

Joseph sighed, taking a left on some desolate boulevard.

They drove a few miles and stopped at the nearest café.

Place was packed, and so they had to wait before they could even be seated.

Sebastian wouldn’t say a thing.

They were led to some faraway table after a while. Once there, Joseph ordered dual Americanos for the both of them, but not before receiving a set of churlish half-looks from the waiter, as if the guy firmly believed he’d catch something just standing anywhere near them.

Five minutes in, and Sebastian still wouldn’t stop staring off into the empty air.

Ten, and he was practically not even there.

Joseph sighed. Lent in close from across the rounded table.

“Seb?” No response. Joseph sighed again, cleared his throat. “You know, you’re gonna have to tell me what’s going on at some point, unless this is some sort of underhanded joke you’ve been scheming with Kidman behind my back—”

“That house,” Sebastian clipped from out of nowhere, suddenly wide awake and leaning in quite close, as well. “What do you know about it?”

“Uh, you mean the house from yesterday?”

“Yes. The house from yesterday.”

“Um. What about it? Didn’t Kidman say it was abandoned?” Joseph paused, lowered his voice. Okay. Perhaps this was serious. “Did you…find something?”

Slowly, Sebastian looked over both his shoulders, took a breath, hunched forward, and brought both his arms to the wood of the table, crossing them tight against his chest. The normal thing he did whenever he was unsure about something; and Sebastian had always been sure about most things.

Joseph looked on in silence, his eyebrow raised from beneath the black rim of his glasses.

This couldn’t be good.

“Look, first off, no, the house is definitely not abandoned,” Sebastian told him in all grimness. “Second, I don’t know. But I have a very bad feeling about the place. There was this man there that I met—and _fuck_ he gave me the creeps—and the house, it was an absolute mess, straight out of some Hollywood nightmare, and when I went over to shake this guy’s hand, I shit you not, Joseph, there was this absolute _stench_ that came out of nowhere, like burning flesh or worse, and today, god, I felt like somebody was watching me; like there was somebody right behind me, _following_ me, breathing down my goddamn neck—”

“Did you get a name?”

“No, I didn’t get a _fucking_ name, I was—“

“Okay, look,” Joseph pressed, interrupting. “You’ll probably kill me for this, but I talked to Juli after I left—”

“ _And?_ ”

Sebastian looked like he was at least two and a half inches away from losing it: pupils heightened, face tense, teeth clenched, leg shaking from underneath the table.

Joseph had never seen him this shaken up before. Not since Myra.

It was…unnerving.

“Nobody lives at that address, according to the records,” Joseph began, watching Sebastian closely. “Nobody’s allowed to. No seal of purchase since 1933.” He took out his notes, thumbed his way to some random page, and started skimming. “Not since one ‘Ernesto Victoriano’ paid good money to have it built, anyway. Both his children perished from a declared ‘accidental house fire’, though, honestly, looking through the records last night, I was not entirely convinced. He and his wife took their lives just weeks after the incident.” Joseph paused, mouthing off some words Sebastian could not understand. “Um, the manor itself has gone untouched since then, should have withstood massive amounts of damage from within the interior—”

“There was no damage,” Sebastian insisted, looking paler the more Joseph went on. “Don’t you remember? I know what I saw.”

Joseph put down his notepad. “Well, thanks to a certain someone, I wouldn’t know. I only got a good look of the front gate.”

Sebastian’s brow furrowed. And for a moment, Joseph felt like he was quite honestly a second’s breadth away from finally being punched across the face.

“So that’s it?” Sebastian hissed, instead. “You think I’m making this shit up as I go?”

“Of course not,” Joseph retorted, ignoring both the waiter and the two freshly-brewed coffees fuming now from in between them. “This wouldn’t be the first time someone’s taken the liberty of trespassing into private property—”

“Fine,” Sebastian shot, tearing open six different sweeteners. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

Joseph stayed quiet, didn’t know what else to say.

Neither man spoke another word to each other for the rest of the day.

**oOo**

Morning hit, and the feeling at his back remained.

The only difference was that now Sebastian felt it wherever he went.

Down the street, as he drove, in the kitchen, right beside his bed.

But it was during the evening in which he had hardly been able to keep himself from spinning on his heel every five seconds, pistol at his hip. Couldn’t stop from constantly watching the bathroom mirror as he shaved, as he showered, certain that someone or some _thing_ would eventually look back at him.

And with each counted hour that stretched, the sensation only got worse. And never better.

For, in the end, Sebastian couldn’t, for the life of him, stay asleep for more than just twenty minutes at a time. At least, not before he shot up from some horrifying dream and stood up, drowning himself in several shots of shit vodka, all in dry hopes that maybe this time he would be able to stay in bed.

And the dreams were awful vivid. Full-length movies, as if he himself were there. Always the same three things: the old mansion, a field of sunflowers, and two young kids—ablaze.

It was ridiculous. Insane.

It didn’t take long for the all-knowing Joseph to catch on to this when he got to work, however.

In fact, there he was now, looking him up and down right outside of the station’s stone building, demanding to know why he looked the way he did, why he wore the shit he wore, why he hadn’t called out of work yesterday like he always did.

“I was tired,” Sebastian muttered.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you sick?”

“Next question.”

“…It’s that house, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Another team has been assigned to it. For Friday. I sent you a text,” Joseph told him. He paused. “You know. I believe you. I want you to know that. About what you said. About that man—”

“Save it,” Sebastian quipped. “I don’t have time for this. Where’s Kidman?”

Joseph sighed. “She’s inside, she wanted to—”

“Good.”

Immediately, Sebastian went inside the building, leaving Joseph somewhere far behind.

**oOo**

Thursday. His day off.

Two days since he last set foot inside that blasted mansion, two days of nightmares.

Two days too much.

And even here, in the deep dark safety of his room, alone and half-drunk, Sebastian was unable to shake away the feeling of that strange man’s palm being pressed down against his own. Cold. White. Stiff. As if he’d shaken hands with no less than a walking corpse.

And he might as well have been. He was so pale. So outlandishly elegant in the ways of his diction and overall poise. So out of place. As if he’d been wrought forth from another time and date, long ago.

But it wasn’t only that.

There’d been a sort of underlying cruelty stitched deep into his presence. A shapeless brand of vicious hate. But there was also a sadness, a blue recurrent wave that Sebastian had almost experienced for himself midst the very moment he’d touched him, so up close, standing so near him, he could think of only Lily. Of flowers. Of fire, and its insidious flame.

Sebastian scowled, smashed in his last cigarette.

This was stupid. Insulting.

Enough was enough.

Here he was, a grown man, a weathered detective who’d seen guts and blood, who’d lost everything, and ghosts were not real.

He plucked out his cellphone from out of his pocket and stared hard at the screen for about ten whole minutes. Or maybe an hour.

Then, slowly, he dialed the only seven numbers he knew by heart.

He waited through the first few rings, his foot tapping into the soft carpet of the room. But by the fourth, there was still no answer. Sebastian took out his lighter, started flicking it as he paced across the room.

Okay. Maybe this was a bad idea.

Maybe he was beginning to come off a little bit weird.

Maybe he _was_ weird.

Fuck it. One more, and he’ll just hang up—

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Sebastian?”

“Yeah. Hi.”

“Wha—I mean, how... How are you?”

“Fantastic,” he scoffed, rubbing his head. “Are you busy?”

“Well,” Joseph yawned. “It’s, like, one in the morning—”

“Yeah, it is. Wow. I must’ve dialed the wrong number—”

“No, wait.” Sebastian could hear Joseph rustling out of bed. Three million different covers (and blankets?) rubbed and swooshed against each other in the process. Nothing in all existence could ever be more awkward than this. “What, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

“I’m going back to that house,” Sebastian dead-panned, already shrugging on his overcoat. “Don’t ask me why. There’s something I have to check out.”

From here, Sebastian could practically already see the outright confusion plastering itself from all possible corners of Joseph’s face.

“What? Why? _How_? Are you crazy?”

“I said no questions, and those are four,” Sebastian said, grabbing his keys. “I’m going, and I need you not to talk.”

“I’m going with you,” Joseph said almost instantly. “I’ll pick you up.”

“No and no.”

“Yes and yes. Why else would you call me in the middle of the night?”

“Uh.”

“Five minutes. I’ll be outside. Don’t go anywhere.”

Well, fuck.

**oOo**


End file.
